Apparently Trump’s feelings were hurt after the North Koreans said mean things! The Washington Post: President Trump on Thursday canceled a planned summit next month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” from the rogue nation in a letter explaining his abrupt decision. “I feel it is inappropriate, at […]

Our panopticon is on track: Powered by artificial intelligence, Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image. It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces, according to Amazon. Amazon is marketing Rekognition for government surveillance. […]

George Will is a twit. I never liked his bow tie. It was never cool. And since he jumped to Fox, he’s now required to not only be conservative, now he has to pander to his audience with over the top rhetoric that makes no damn sense.

HOWEVER,

It is absolutely true that the ACA has created two classes of citizens: those who are protected (at least temporarily) by their employer’s health insurance policies, and a second class that will be systemically exploited by a private insurance market. The systemic exploitation comes from a mandate to buy insurance, a lack of transparency on how the rates are determined, and a vastly inferior product. Oh, yes it is a vastly inferior product. If you can’t get covered while you’re on vacation like the person who is lucky enough to have employer provided insurance, then it’s a bad product and that’s just one of the many differences between the two.

There are no controls on costs, which means that hospitals that are cashing in big on employer-insurance company private contracts don’t want to participate, further reducing access to treatment. The only control that the consumer has is to not use the product that they were forced to buy.

I’m not sure what you would call that but if only some people are forced to participate into buying crap while other people get a pass (for now), but it sure smacks of something from the pre-civil rights days. Then, to top it all off, it falls most heavily on minority populations and everyone who was laid off in the past several years. If I were the Democrats, I’d be worried about that last group. They’re sprinkled all over suburban districts these days.

So, George Will is still a twit and he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying. He’s just saying it because someone is paying him the big bucks to say it.

But that doesn’t mean that the “separate but equal” idea doesn’t have real meaning when it comes to Obamacare.

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Even those with employer plans can be getting the shaft, particularly if they work for small or mid-sized businesses. Better plans (at last in NY) are no longer available for these businesses. Just for the large ones. The results are typical but not as extreme: increased deductibles, higher co-pays, smaller groups of participating doctors.

It should be “affordable” for low-income and unemployed as they are likely to receive subsidies to pay for it. I have been self-insured for years. Under ACA act, my costs would go from $320 per month to slightly over $600 per month for the bronze plan. Got one of those famous letters from my insurance company that said I would be grandfathered in, but they are no longer offering policies to those over 50. So lose my insurance and I would be stuck paying double with ACA. Not very affordable, imo. And, no, I don’t qualify for subsidies and am just middle class trying to tread water same as most. So, would assume its the middle class who are going to foot the bill for the subsidies which should make it affordable for low-income and unemployed. Nothing fair or equal about it. Just going to put the middle class a few more notches closer poverty level.

If you are going to be grandfathered in, call your carrier for details. My experience with being grandfathered in is that you keep your existing plan (whether it is available to new subscribers, or not) for as long as you remain a subscriber to their services. I have a relative who grandfathered over when a major change took place with a big carrier here – 15 years later she’s still enjoying the benefits of that original plan. So, before you get discouraged, ask the people who know the answer.

I fear there is so much gasping and jumping to negative conclusions going on that once the websites are all up and running properly, and the people are actually living with the plans they selected that it will be difficult to erase the inaccurate information about how this all works.

I have no doubt whatsoever that we are taking a big hit to what is available to us, and the biggest benefits are being given to the insurance companies, but I do know enough about how the industry works to not get worked up over some of the complaints being made to sound horrendous when they are no different than what is currently in place. If you’re told to panic because your credit score is being used to deny you coverage or up your rates, rest-assured, your credit score has been used by the insurance industry for decades, and for good reason. If it wasn’t, your rates would be so much higher.

Right, I’m grandfathered in so I don’t have to switch to ACA. My complaint is that it really isn’t all that affordable. Also, somebody always has to pay for subsidies. Here it seems to be falling on the middle class. The line between poor and middle class becomes more blurry.

I too have no doubt that the biggest benefits will come to insurance companies. And that is not a good thing, imo.

Also, I did read enough of the healthcare bill to see that it may not be a very good thing at all. Time will tell.

Speaking of … I’m getting updates from my republican Representative and when I go to their web site it seems to be working. Same for republican Senator Pat Toomey. Bob Casey Jr has a banner up about the shut down and he is helpless.

In the small business pool we just got hit with another 16% hick, in addition to the hick in July. Both parties knew it was a windfall for the insurance industry, but said and did nothing. Today congress is grandstanding, as neither side is offering solutions and both kept HR 676 out of the health care reform talks out.

In essence they are allowing the insurance company to hold us upside down and shake all the money out of our pockets, while they do their grandstanding. Congress shouldn’t have health benefits, they should be required to buy it out in the open market with us poor slobs.

George Will is wrong. I love how people like him who have never been in the individual market make these statements. I was in the individual insurance market from 1998 until 2010. You ALWAYS got screwed in that market. What I was paying in the individual market was 10K a year for plan with a 5K deductible for a family of 4. My husband went with a company and the costs were the same for plan but with a 3K deductible. So he’s a twit not because Obamacare creates two classes so much he fails to realize that there already were two classes of people in the healthcare market and Obamacare did nothing to solve this problem. Truly NO ONE is discussing the real problem and it’s the healthcare insurance industry’s business mode.

I guess I am going to have to actually look at what is provided in GA to see what the federal exchanges are. The main problem I have heard here is that the rural areas don’t have the choices. From what i understand Metro Atlanta has a ton of providers in the networks and something like 30 plans to choose from. People in SW Georgia only have one BCBS plan on the exchange. So it might be that some regions are okay while others are really bad.

I found the exact same Kaiser plan that we had on the individual market years ago and were paying $800 for. It is the bronze plan. It now costs 544 for a family of four. So some people are going to do okay on this. Apparently the states that let the feds set everything up for them the ones whining the most about all this are going to apparently come out pretty good I would guess.

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Body: Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. to deliver a paper at a conference in the technical field where I worked, ten years or so and two or three careers ago, before the dot.com trash. The trip was solely an exercise in merit-making, since I doubt very much I'll get work in the field, but reconnecting with old friends was really great -- even […]

The Hill, "Court orders Iran to pay billions to 9/11 victims and families: A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Iran to pay billions of dollars in damages to the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks." It's unlikely they will actually pay it, but the very idea that Iran should have to pay for an attack by Saudi Arabians is pr […]